Medicos and the Pictures.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 30 October 1914, Page 8

Medicos and the Pictures.

rELLING HOW THE FILMS ARE BEING ADAPTED FOR SCIENc ~ TIFIC PURPOSES.

Asked what he considered the most wonderful bioscope films, a manufacturer without hesitation replied those made for the medical profession. These films, which have been taken with the aid of physicians such as Mr. F. Martin-Duncan, F.R.P.S. Eng; Professor Dastre, France ; and Dr. K. Blake Baldwin, Chicago, are not only wonderful, but will, without doubt, prove a great aid to the study of diseases. Dr. Blake Baldwin's w-ork consists of pictures of patient's suffering from locomotor ataxia, paralysis, and similar diseases. Each day during treatment the patient was made to go through certain movements while pictures were taken to show what progress had been made towards finding the proper treatment or cure of the disease. Dr. Victor Lespinasse has made films showing the growth and life of typhoid and cholera microbes by means of • a powerful microscope and a camera fixed to a clockwork apparatus which turns the operating handle of the camera so that one picture an hour was taken. The pictures shown by Professor Dastre are of a drop of blood taken from a rabbit into which the microbes of that mysterious disease, sleeping sickness, had been injected. "MITIER" THAN THE SWORD. These microbes could be seen in the spot of blood when thrown on to the screen as objects about a foot long and very much awake. Others were of cheesemites attacking a piece of cheese, and these appear on the screen as large crablike animals. The latest and most ingenious medical pictures, those taken by means of X-rays which show the passage of food down the digestive tract, are made possible by mixing with the food a harmless substance through which the rays have difficulty in passing. The food, therefore, is shown up as a dark mass In the picture. And then, again, excellent pictures of difficult 'or new surgical operations are now being taken, and the medical student can learn from these practically as well as if he were in the operating theatre, and, moreover, instead of only a few students being able to see the actual operation, many hundreds may see it accomplished.